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People, Passion, Places, Pain: ThrillerFest!

By Donna Galanti

Wednesday Thoughts

Fellow ITW Debut Authors Amy Rogers and Brian Andrews

People: A ton of them this week! Met new and legendary authors at ThrillerFest VII in NYC. Read a great wrap up of ThrillerFest here by Anthony J. Franze and Jenny Milchman.

New friend and super nice ITW Debut Author, Robin Gainey. Check our her book, Jack of Hearts!

New being my fellow ITW Debut Authors such as Robin Gainey, Nancy Bilyeau, Brian Andrews, Amy Rogers, Amy Shojai, and Jeremy Burns – just to name a few of the 21 of us that presented our debut novel at the conference.

With ITW Debut Author, Nancy Bilyeau, and author and innovator, M.J. Rose

See the full list of these rising stars here as reported by the Library Journal.

First night out in NYC with Janice Bashman and Doug Preston

And legendary folks were there such as R.L. Stine, Sandra Brown, Catherine Coulter, David Morrell, and Lee Child. Had an amazing time with some fascinating and fun people all around.

My son’s favorite, the legendary R.L. Stine, celebrating 20 years of the Goosebumps series.

Lee Child, creator of Jack Reacher novels

See my full ThrillerFest album here. I learned that we are all unique in how we write. R.L. Stine types all of his books with one finger. Richard North Patterson spends eight months creating a folder for each chapter then sits down and writes the entire novel in a month or so. Doug Preston helped find a legendary lost city of Honduras in his research.

I learned the fascinating backgrounds of some authors. Peter James was once the housekeeper for Orson Welles. Ted Dekker was raised by missionaries who lived among the headhunter tribes of Indonesia.

With the gracious montauk-monster.com/pharmacy/diazepam Sandra Brown

And as if meeting super star authors wasn’t enough, I was lucky to sit down to dinner next to the lovely star of Charlie’s Angels, Cheryl Ladd, and her author and music producer husband, Brian Russell.

Great time talking with Brian Russell and Cheryl Ladd at the Awards Dinner

Passion: Author! Author! And many of them. I was surrounded by authors of all levels from the emerging author to the thriller author with 30+ books out.

And what are they passionate about? Writing of course! I sat in on some lively panels from how to kill off your characters, what are the bones of a good thriller, does sex really sell?, how to handle taboos, to keeping it credible. All debated with passion. We writers live for our stories and characters. The vibe for it was heavy.

Places: NYC of course. It’s been many years since I traveled in to the Big Apple. It’s as vibrant and noisy and colorful as I remember. Just walking the streets and venturing into the NY Public Library was an experience. This imposing Beaux Arts building at 5th and 42nd St. is a walk in history and phenomenal architecture of the previous century.

At the ITW Debut Author Breakfast

Pain: Knowing I would have to present my book to the conference. Preparation and practice almost shed the anxiety – until the microphone was passed to me! And lack of sleep. Not the worst pain there is, especially when it means attending such a conference as ThrillerFest. But a few days in a row with only four hours of a sleep each night add up. It’s worth it.

I’ll leave you with one of the highlights at ThrillerFest was the hysterical “Ghost Writers In The Sky” performance by authors Brad Parks and Daniel Palmer.

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Marketing & Brand: Tips from Philly Writer’s Conf.

By Donna Galanti

Still hot writing business and craft tips to report on from the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference this month.  Here is more of what I learned during that weekend from a round of excellent presenters.

Creating Your Brand and Marketing Your Work presented by Don Lafferty and Marie Lamba.

ID your reader and market
Are there special qualities, issues or setting in your book that appeal to certain groups? Hikers, teens, mountain climbers, veterinarians? Find those groups on Twitter and listen to their conversations. Mention your book when relevant.

Do you offer readers something they need in your book? Can you do a workshop or talk? For example, is your book MG or YA? Hook up with Scout organizations to do a workshop on your book so they earn a reading badge and your earn readers (for your sequel too).

Does your book feature a certain locale? Post photos of those places along with mention in your book on a blog post.

Who are the gatekeepers to your book? Librarians, parents, bookstores, conventions, etc. Find a way to access.

Connect and be found
Be on Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, LibraryThing, IndieBound, LinkedIn.
Start a blog.
Add tags (keywords) to bottom of your blog posts so they can be found in a web search by keyword.
Keep blog posts to 300 words.

Brand look
Create author bio/photo/brand image/press release templates

We all know what brand this is

Create one look for yourself (photo, image) and carry over into all marketing pieces to create “your brand”.

Create a short and long bio, with photo.

Create business cards you can change as needed to print out for special events.

Band together with other authors
Start a blog with a group of authors and expand your publicity. Good example is here and here!
Collaborate with your author group to do  community outreach together related to literacy.
Do signings together.

Share the love
Don’t let your social networking be all about you. For each tweet about your work/success post 12 tweets  about the success of others or valuable information.
Post reviews of book similar to yours online and email the author your reviews.
Find authors similar to you and check out their blogs, blogs they’ve been a guest on and any published articles.
Write articles for industry publications/blogs sharing your knowledge.
Always include your bio in any post/article so folks can link back to you.

Build brand through family/close friends
Invite family and close friends to be your “street team”.
Have them:
Attend signings
Do online reviews
Request your book from local library
Hand out bookmarks
Plant your book card in similar books in the bookstores positioned halfway through the book
Face your book out on the shelf (publisher’s pay for that space)

Constantly re-evaluate your marketing!

Download Don Lafferty’s marketing guide!

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More Hot Tips from the Philly Writer’s Conf: On Character

By Donna Galanti

Still lots of good stuff to report on from the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference June 3-5!

More notes on character – presented by Gregory Frost, Author of ShadowBridge and many more works.

Grab readers in your first para with the MC’s voice. Create image of MC in our mind from the get-go.

Don’t rely heavy on character description. We need their voice to build character in our mind.

Don’t give reader everything in building character.

Don’t stop the “movie” to explain. Avoid all urges to explain. STOP. Repeat. Again. Avoid all urges to explain!

Present events and let them pass before reader’s eyes so they can judge what is going on.

Characters must show reactions to situations, not reactions by the author.

Don’t lead reader by the hand. Let them find out.

TIP: Write first draft of few pages to explore characters. Start out intuitively to write these first pages of your novel. Stop so far in (20+ pages). If it seems to be working then stop and outline entire book.

Element to characters:
Desire. All that happens in the novel occurs because of desire.
MC wants something bad enough and will do anything to get it. Your MC must yearn for something. Show us early on in the book what your MC wants, yearns for.
Not sure who’s story it is? Pick the person who suffers the most, hurts the most. Make it that person.
Decide who tells the story best.

Exercise to do to create a detailed character:
Choose a container, wallet, jewelry box, laundry basket, any etc. and make a list of what your character(s) keeps in this place. Choose the right items that ring true for each character.  Make it detailed to create a unique an identity from this list. Can you find elements for narrative thread from the list?  (ie. Theater stubs, what happened before/during or after). If so, add them in to book.

NOTE: Get Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction (book). Used as textbook across campuses. Expensive. Try locating on EBay.

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Hot WritingTips from the Philly Writer’s Conf: On Plot

By Donna Galanti

Kelly Simmons, Author of Standing Still & The Bird House on Plot

Kelly gave us great ideas on how to prepare the plot of our book BEFORE writing it so we don’t get 80 pages in & have to re-write it all.

On Plot: Ride the 7 C’s
Combustion
Coordination
Conflict
Characters
Conclusion
Completion
Commitment
Tip: Combustion and Coordination are most important

Combustion
Most plot problems from beginning. Creating a premise with such interesting characters and high stakes will automatically inspire interesting plot and things to happen with combustion. Start properly vs. revise. Build tension. Create combustion plus conflict as it relates to premise. Look at your plot and see where you can add those what-ifs and extra high stakes.  The engine of your plot is your premise. Then combust it. Then add higher stakes.

Your book’s premise must answer these questions.
1. Where are we?
2. Who is the lead?
3. What do they want?
4. Why should we care?
5. Where are they going?

Example: Jason and Joshua are brothers who attend the same high school and learn of a Columbine-esque plot about to go down the next day. The novel unfolds over 24 hours when they must save their classmates. Now we have possibilities for more conflict. Make better:  Jason and Joshua are twins. They are in love with the same girl. Their Dad is a cop and comes to the scene. Jason doesn’t know Joshua has a gun. Mother committed suicide by gun. Twins have an invalid sister in a wheelchair and both want to save the sister. Com-BUSTED!

Coordination
Action + Voice + Setting + Premise must all be coordinated together for your story to flow. Before writing, experiment with POV to see if a good fit for your premise. Exercise: Write down plot premise. Then write down opening scene in different voices.

Conflict
Stuck in the middle? Add some conflict. This can get you out of that sagging middle we all dread. Change locale, add excuse for an argument, add a surprising situation. Kelly echoed Gregory Frost in emphasizing here the 3Ds of writing premier-pharmacy.com conflict: Desire + Danger = Drama.

Characters
Look at your characters voice. Strip out all prose/exposition and just look at their dialogue to see the beat of their voice. Flow their beat throughout the book. Step outside of your outline to listen to your characters as they grow through your book as they may change from your outline. Ie. Would this character do this or that? Is that true to them and their voice? Maybe it was in the beginning but not now.

Give the reader a character they enjoy. A character you sympathize with, a character who longs for something and then take away what they most want. Give the reader a character to enjoy – but not necessarily like.

Conclusion
Wrap up your novel in a satisfying way that serves the premise and reader anticipation. Tie up loose ends.

Completion
Know when to end. Is your book too long? Then look at where there is overwriting. End sooner if need be. Too many plot points can be too much – know when plot is done.
Tip: Where should novel start? Write the synopsis and elevator pitch first to find out.
Tip: To make your writing stronger brainstorm more and (over)write less.

Commitment
What quadrant of writer are you in? Dreamer * Outliner * Non-Outliner * Doer.  Find a good combo of two. Ie. Combo of being a non-outliner and dreamer might need more of the “doer” in them to get the writing done. For me, I am an outliner and a doer but I need more of the dreamer in me to sit and “think outside the box” and be creative.

Different plots = Different Styles Some plots demand a particular type of writing. Ie. Thriller/suspense should have action first, scare readers early on, fast pace, punchy dialogue. Exercise to do: Write opening paragraph or page in different voices. 1st person, 3rd person, 3rd person limited, Omniscient, even 2nd person (very difficult! Hard to write)

Now plot on!

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